Applied linguistics researchers’ possible selves as motivational resources guiding their research productivity

ABSTRACT

Research publication has increasingly turned into academics’ top priority around the world. Since researchers’ professional survival/growth in the current competitive academic atmosphere hinges upon their research profile, there is a need for investigating how researchers’ possible selves may guide their research productivity. Therefore, in this study, we explored, through interviews and narratives, how ideal, ought-to, and feared selves of Applied Linguistics researchers at various academic career stages – doctoral students, assistant professors and associate professors – interact with their research productivity. The findings demonstrated that the ideal selves motivating the researchers to publish are oriented towards images of problem-solving or insight-providing, highly-focused, world-recognised, and influential life-long learner-researchers. Additionally, fears of ending up as publishing-or-perishing, unknowledgeable non-publishing, academically marginalised, and unfocused researchers are among the dimensions of researchers’ feared selves which guide their research productivity. Furthermore, researchers’ desires to gain visibility in the research community, fulfill the university requirements, preserve their international researcher positions, and turn into prolific publishing-practicing researchers trigger them to publish in top-tier publication outlets. The study provides practical implications for researchers, professors, and researcher educators.

KEYWORDS:

• Researcher
• ideal self
• ought-to self
• feared self
• research productivity

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mohammad Nabi Karimi

Mohammad Nabi Karimi works as an associate professor in the department of foreign languages, Kharazmi University, Tehran, Iran. His areas of interest include L2 Teacher Education/Development, Psychology of Language, Teachers/Learners’ Beliefs/Cognitions. He has published in a number of international journals.

Fatemeh Asadnia

Fatemeh Asadnia is a PhD graduate of Applied Linguistics. She is currently working as a visiting lecturer at Kharazmi University. Her areas of research interest include computer-assisted language learning (CALL), teacher education, and ESP. She has co-authored some articles in national journals and has presented papers at international conferences.